abdal hakim murad

May 3, 2020

Muslim Scholars Must Learn To Be Macro Thinkers

Let me commence with the following: The sixteenth century French essayist and moralist, Michel de Montaigne, wrote in his famous Essays: ‘It could be said of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other men’s flowers, providing of my own only the string to tie them together.’ This, I should Continue reading

contemporary concerns, knowledge & learning, modernity & muslimness

abdal hakim murad, Cambridge Muslim College, How can authentic Muslimness thrive in modernity, how social sciences discourse can manipulate Islamic discourse, Iskam, Islam and humanism, Islam and occasionalism, Islam and the need to understand modernity, Islamic macro thinking, Islamic pedagogy and madrassahs and modern curriculums, Islamic response to universe from nothing, Islamism and other such terms coopted by securitisation industry, Muslim macro theology, social welfare and humanism, updating curriculum in higher Islamic institutions
February 3, 2016

Teaching & Purification: the Two Prophetic Tasks

The Prophet ﷺ once said: ‘I am the prayer of my father Abraham and the glad tidings [proclaimed by] Jesus to his people, and the vision of my mother who, while pregnant with me, saw a light issue forth from her which lit up the castles of Syria.’1 The good news of Jesus, referred to above, is mentioned in the Continue reading

heart matters, knowledge & learning, sufism, suluk & spirituality

abdal hakim murad, action is the goal of knowledge, al-munawi, Islamic teaching, knowledge as means, politics subordinate to purification in Islam, purification of the soul, purification through action, tazkiyah in Islam, the two prophetic tasks
March 11, 2013

Islam’s Rational Monotheism in a Nutshell

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad explains: ‘In the Western milieu, converts to Islam claim that they are attracted to what they regard as its clear, rationally-accessible teachings, unobscured by elaborate mysteries. It is not only insiders who wish to take this view. Non-Muslim academic accounts … now frequently draw attention to the central role of reason Continue reading

consider Islam, da’wah & muslim apologetics, reason, religion, rationality, theology

abdal hakim murad, converts to islam, Islam and reason, islamic theology, Qur’an and rationality, rational arguments in the Qur’an, Tim Winter

About Me

My name is Surkheel Sharif (aka Abu Aaliyah). Born and raised in London, England, I began my more formal, but gradual studies of the Islamic sciences around the late 1980s (just a few years after having quit my degree in Astrophysics). I also gained an MA in Islamic Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, in 2009.

I’ve translated a few Islamic works from Arabic into English; one of them, a short text on Muslim spirituality, called The Exquisite Pearl (2000). I have also authored a few books, including: More Fish Please & the Earth’s Complaint (2011); Fussing Over the 15th of Sha’ban & the Golden Rule of Differing (2011); A Muslim’s Guide to Modernity (2025); and Salafism Reconsidered (forthcoming)

I am the founder and current Director of the Jawziyyah Institute (est. 1999): a non-profit organisation dedicated to cultivating an Islam true to its time-honoured tradition, relevant to its current context, and of benefit to wider society.

abdal hakim murad

Muslim Scholars Must Learn To Be Macro Thinkers

Teaching & Purification: the Two Prophetic Tasks

Islam’s Rational Monotheism in a Nutshell